Carrier route record

DLDTW→MSN

Delta Air Lines · Detroit to Madison

Flights: 360
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 40%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.

Delta on DTW to MSN lands a B, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 360 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Delta on DTW to MSN from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

80.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 356 completed flights

Avg delay

74 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.11%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

74.3%

Every carrier on DTW to MSN, 906 flights

These figures cover 360 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.

Carrier by carrier

Delta against every carrier on DTW to MSN

Delta flew 360 of the 906 flights on DTW to MSN, about 40% of it. Its 80.3% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 74.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 80.3% to Republic at 50.0%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.

On-time performance by carrier on DTW to MSN
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines (this page)thin sample	360	80.3%	74 min	1.11%	B
SkyWest Airlines	544	70.4%	82 min	0.74%	C+
Republic Airwaysthin sample	2	50.0%	23 min	0.00%	F+

Departure window

When Delta runs best on this route

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 360 flights.

5am–8am—
8am–11am6 flights—
11am–2pm132 flights80.8%
2pm–5pm86 flights80.2%
5pm–8pm69 flights79.4%
8pm–5am67 flights80.3%

Scale runs 70% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The time of day barely matters here. The 11am–2pm window tops the set at 80.8% and 5pm–8pm sits at 79.4%, about a point apart across 360 flights. Pick the departure that suits the trip: whatever is going wrong here is not accumulating over the course of the day. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 132 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on DTW to MSN through the year

Jul–Sep 202596 flights80.2%
Oct–Dec 2025125 flights80.6%
Jan–Mar 202627 flights—
Apr–Jun 2026112 flights82.7%

Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 80.3% on time across 360 flights.

Quarter by quarter Delta on DTW to MSN held fairly steady: 80.2% in Jul–Sep 2025, 80.6% in Oct–Dec 2025 and 82.7% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 3 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 84.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 75.0%. 10 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Delta runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 60% of the 5,194 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.

Carrier
60%
Late-arriving aircraft
34%
National Airspace System
6%
Extreme weather
0%

The largest share of delay minutes, 60%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 3,110 of the 5,194 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 5,194 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations sit at 1.11% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

8.7% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 311 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 85.0% on time across 360 flights, 5 points above this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 5 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 360 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.

What to do with this

Booking Delta on DTW to MSN

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 360 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 80.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 356 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures